1. Field of the Invention
The field of invention relates to an apparatus for materials testing of test objects using X-rays.
2. Description of Related Art
A known apparatus to test wheels comprises an X-ray system with an X-ray tube and an image intensifier, which are both mounted on a C-arm that is pivotable around a horizontal axis. A wheel that is to be tested is conveyed by a roller conveyor to a horizontally movable carrier, which has two roller-equipped grapplers, and is moved into the test position. In the test position, an X-ray scan is taken of the wheel, for each of several swivel positions of the C-arm, as the wheel is rotated around its axis by actuating the roller-equipped grapplers which act on the lower rim flange of the wheel, and is shifted horizontally by the carrier. Thus, this is a triaxial testing device. After the X-ray test, the wheel is removed from the carrier and transferred to a roller conveyor on the output side. Afterwards, the carrier is then returned to the input side, in order to receive the next wheel to be tested.
In the multi-axial wheel test installation known from DE 101 53 379 B4, the X-ray device is stationary, but the wheel is pivotable around a transverse axis that lies in the transport plane and is rotated around its axis by actuation of roller-equipped grapplers acting on the lower rim flange. In order to allow the wheel to pivot around the transverse axis, transport chains are pivot-mounted for conveying and loading the wheel to be tested onto the swivel arms, but are pivoted away during the X-ray testing. This design is extraordinarily complicated.
DE 202 08 174 U1 discloses a triaxial X-ray test installation with a rotatable carousel carrier for conveying and loading the test objects into or out of a test position, in which the wheel to be tested is rotated around its own axis by profile wheels. The X-ray device is mounted to a C-arm that can be rotated around two horizontal axes perpendicular to each other, which is very expensive to construct. The carousel carrier is extraordinarily space-consuming in comparison to translational conveying devices.
A uniaxial wheel testing device is known with a LDA (linear diode-array)-line detector. For the X-ray test of a wheel, the wheel is transported by a chain conveyor to the X-ray device and lifted into test position from the transport plane by a gripping device and rotated there around its axis by a rotating mechanism provided on the gripping device. Pivoting the X-ray device or the wheel horizontally is not required, whereby the cost can be reduced compared to the aforementioned test devices. Due to differences in wall thickness of the test objects, it is difficult to obtain satisfactory image quality for all areas of the test object.